You do realize that Muslims were the first to organize a democratic state, right? When European royalty was beheading the poor and living side by side with their unflushable crap holes, Muslims organized a democracy. That then spread. Abu Bakr Al-Siddeeg was the first Khaleefa after the Prophet Mohammad. He was, as all four, was elected.Thank you for your comment, WOM. We didn't realize European rulers had such deplorable sanitary practices at the time the Islamic world was crisscrossed with drain pipes and water mains. We have also suffered from the illusion that European royalty were less interested in beheading their poor people than in avoiding being beheaded by various hordes of invading Islamic democrats.
Frankly, we were also not aware of the fact that Mohammed came to this earth before the formation of the Greek city states. Here all along we believed Mohammed graced the earth with his presence in the seventh century A.D.
You have set us on the path to enlightenment.
We did do some cursory research after you provided your comment but it has not led us to conform our opinion with yours. Bernard Lewis, for example, seems to think that "democratic" is not the first thing one would think about when the work "Islam" is mentioned:
[T]he political experience and political traditions of Islam are after all almost exclusively monarchical and authoritarian -- expressed in regimes of the kind associated in the minds of most people with the familiar terms Caliph and Sultan.[1]The Listless Lawyer thinks that the democratic aspects of those first "elections" is a bit murky, to say the least. In fact, from what he or she says, you've got to conclude that believing the experience of Muslims throughout history has been an example of "democracy in action" strongly suggests you have a fondness for crack cocaine:
The Young Ottomans’ next argument noted that Abu Bakr, cousin of the Prophet and the first Rightly Guided Caliph, was chosen by the acclamation of the Muslim community assembled together after the death of the Prophet. Since that time, the classical Sunni theory of the caliphate had always maintained the fiction that the caliph was elected by the leading men of the community, although the manner of election and the number of electors were [extremely] ambiguous. Within the umma (community of believers), they pointed out, all are on equal footing. Though the ruler performs a different function, it is the umma as a whole that choose the ruler. Thus, the Young Ottomans argued that, taken together, the principle of shura and the election of the caliphate demonstrated that Islam was, and always had been, fundamentally democratic, and that “all the intervening centuries of autocratic rule had been a tragic diversion from the true path”.To argue that the supposed "election" of the first caliphs establishes Islam as something compatible with democracy is like arguing that the New Economic Policy of the 1920s Soviet Union proves that the U.S.S.R. throughout its sorry history was committed to private enterprise.
. . . Even Abu Bakr, however, circumvented this method of choosing a successor by nominating Umar (the second Rightly Guided Caliph) without consultation. Further, the Islamic conception of political leadership changed over time. When the caliphs eventually lost their effective power, for example, jurists such as Al-Mawardi reconciled the king-making activities of the Buyids with the principle of election by declaring (with al-Ash’ari before him) that an election was valid even if only one elector was present. Obviously, this is not the most democratic of beliefs. Similarly, when the caliphate finally ceased to exist independently, the jurists transferred the concept of the caliphate to the sultanate, requiring only that the sultan acknowledged [sic] the universality of Shari’ah (in principle if not always in practice).
. . . Thus, it is not at all clear that the historical practice of electing the caliph reflects a recognition that contemporary democratic theory can be authentically Islamic. [2]
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- modern day Saladin and major, major figure in al Qaida -- was positively hostile to democracy:
We have declared a bitter war against the principle of democracy and all those who seek to enact it. [3]Ok. We grant you that it's unfair to use that quote to suggest that Islam and democracy are incompatible. Al-Zarqawi was (visualize big smileyface) a seriously deranged individual who probably (a) thought that Ramadan was the Islamic Christmas and (b) was yet another of those Muslim "misunderstanders" of the Koran. A theoretician he was not, preferring lead pipes and eye gouging to parlor dialectics.
We would, however, add to Professor Lewis's "monarchical and authoritarian" the adjectives "theocratic" and "moribund." Far from see Islam as a vibrant, flexible, adaptive belief system, it appears to have guaranteed the ascendancy of an ignorant priestly caste as determined to acquire power and riches as any piratical class of cutthroats in history. The mullahs and imams are, furthermore, equally determined to maintain absolute obedience to their antiquated opinions and to forestall all independent inquiry. Hence, "moribund."
WOM, you'll have to do better then cite ambiguous examples from the seventh century before anyone will buy that Islam and democracy are like two love birds.
We prefer "scorpion in a bottle" as an image, by which we mean Westerners should keep Muslims properly under control and as distant from our societies as possible. Do that and there's nothing to worry about. However, let Muslims loose in democratic, secular societies to vote and take advantage of our freedoms and the West is only asking for trouble.
We are genuinely open to being persuaded otherwise but the only thing really world class about Muslims to our way of thinking is their mastery of mines, booby traps, clandestine communication, creative butchery, whining about Israel, suppression of creative thinking, and obtaining welfare benefits from gullible Western governments.
Notes
[1] "The Concept of an Islamic Republic." By Bernard Lewis, Welt des Islams, New Ser., Vol. 4, Issue 1 (1955), pp. 1-9 (emphasis added).
[2] "Islamic Democracy and the Sovereignty of God: The Election of the Caliph." The Listless Lawyer, 4/22/05.
[3] "Zarqawi pledges war on Iraq elections." Telegraph.co.uk, 1/23/05.
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